Buying a new home before your current one sells can mean a more direct move and less coordinating around your own sale, but it also comes with real financial exposure most homeowners haven’t fully priced out. This week’s Advice by Design looks at what it actually takes to buy first responsibly, from accessing your current equity to budgeting for the stretch where you might own two homes at once.
Spring gets the glory and summer gets the traffic, but autumn might be the most underrated season to buy or sell a home. This special edition of Advice by Design looks at what’s genuinely different about a fall market, fewer competing offers, bare branches that reveal what a house was hiding, and a pace that leaves room to actually think.
The market feels slower, stranger, and harder to read than it did a few years ago, and that feeling is only half right. Pulling 22 years of data across Durham and five surrounding counties, this special edition of Advice by Design shows what’s genuinely changed, what was always an outlier, and where today’s market actually sits in the full history.
Loving a home and feeling ready to buy it aren’t always the same feeling, and that gap can catch a buyer off guard right when it matters most. This week’s Advice by Design looks at where hesitation actually tends to come from, the property, the price, past experience, or simply the weight of a big decision, and how to tell which kind is worth listening to.
Buying a home and saving for retirement can start to feel like competing goals, especially once a lender names a number you technically qualify for. This week’s Advice by Design looks at how buyers can think through affordability, down payments, and post-closing cash without losing sight of a retirement plan already in motion, and why the biggest approved payment is not always the smartest one to take.
A renovated home can be one of the easiest properties to fall for, and one of the easiest to overpay for if the finishes are doing most of the talking. This week’s Advice by Design looks at how to separate genuine value from surface-level appeal, from permits and prior listing history to comparable sales and the difference between paying for improvements and paying for finishes.
Purchase price, down payment, and mortgage rate get most of a buyer’s attention, but homeowners insurance is part of the real cost of owning a specific home, and it can vary more than buyers expect between two similarly priced properties. This week’s Advice by Design looks at where those differences come from and when to bring insurance into a home search.
An estate sale listing can look exactly like any other home on the market, but the story behind it, and what a buyer needs to ask, is often different. This week’s Advice by Design walks through who actually has authority to sell, why seller knowledge can be limited, and how to evaluate the opportunity on the property’s own merits rather than assumptions about where it came from.
Square footage used to be the headline number in every home search, but younger buyers are asking a different set of questions. This week’s Advice by Design looks at what’s actually moving the needle, from flexible layouts and lower-maintenance living to energy efficiency, technology, and outdoor space that gets used, rather than just admired from the kitchen window.
Choosing between a townhome and a single-family home often comes down to how you actually want to spend your time, not just square footage or price. This week’s Advice by Design breaks down what low-maintenance living really covers, how to tell whether an HOA is actually keeping up with what it promises, and who tends to benefit most from making the trade.
